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sc94597 on 28 June 2015
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vivster said:
sc94597 said:
vivster said:
I hope incest and ephebophilia comes next. The bans on those are just ridiculous.

 Yeah I don't particularly advocate these two things, but I think they need to be legalized, as right now they lead to ridiculous sentences: to act on ephebophilia especially. I think anyone who has been sexually aware for a few years is capable of giving consent, and for most people that is well before the 15-19 that ephebophilia entails. Some might argue that an older person can impression somebody that young, but the same is true for an older person and a 20 year old, or even two individuals of the same age. The whole point of these laws is to protect pre-pubescent children, and that is because there is no way they can understand what sex really means and whther or not they can give consent. A minor who is for the most part post-pubescent can accurately give consent because they understand what sex entails and what it means to them. Obviously the age range needs to be high enough to consider variation of when puberty starts, but other than that I see no problem with the age of consent being 15 years old.

I think it's stupid to set arbitrary ages. As you said, the puberty varies and as such it should be treated case by case. By a higher age you do protect late bloomers but you will restrict the early ones. I see no reason to set an age for anything. It's all about psychology.

Setting a definite age is like saying you only count as a gay man once you had anal sex. It's absolutely arbitrary.

These arbitrary restrictions might make the judicial process easier but they lead to ridiculous sentences in certain cases.

I think it would be very hard to prove when a male started puberty. A girl is pretty easy, just ask when she started her cycles. But still, that is something very difficult to do and not everybody would want to answer that question. Having a set age just makes things a little bit clearer, especially on the part of the defendant. There would just be too much legal convolusion to not have a set age.

Still anything would be better than the current laws.

I read a case recently about a 19 year old college kid who had sex with a girl who I think was 14 or 15. They met on one of those hookup apps, she lied about her age, and neither his parents nor her parents had an issue with it (her parents recognized that she lied.) The court didn't care. It is truly ridiculous. Now he can't log on to the internet without supervision and he's on the sex offender registry. There was no actual victim in this case, yet his life - as he planned- is essentially ruined from this (he was a computer science major, so obviously now he needs to change majors.)

I'm all for protections for pre-pubsecent children, but I know that I personally wouldn't have minded to have had sex with an adult when I was 14 or 15, and I know that is true for many 14-15 year olds. My understanding of sex and why I want(ed) it when I was a 14 year old is no different from what it is now (as a 21 year old.) So i really don't see ephebophilia as wrong ethically or morally. I do think it can lead to some problems (particularly with parents) and levels of maturity of the younger person, but that is irrelevant to the actual act, and more of a side-issue that people should decide for themselves.